SIWA
An average Balinese knows, however vaguely, the names of countless
bataras. He is well aware, for instance, that Batara"
Brahma is the god of fire, that Surya is the Sun, Indra the
Lor of Heaven, and Yama that of Hell, Durga the goddess of
deathi, Semara the god of physical love, and so forth ; but
unless he has had. a certain amount of theological edu-,,
cation, to him the Batara Siwa is simply another of the remote
high gods, although the highest in rank; a sort of Radja among
the bataras.
However,
to the learned Brahmanic priests Siwa represents, the abstract
idea of divinity that permeates everything - the, total of
the forces we call God. Siwa is the source of all life,..
the synthesis of the creative and generative powers in nature;,
consequently in him are the two sexes in one-. the Divine,
Hermaphrodite (Windu"), symbol of completion, the ultimate
perfection. As male Siwa is the mountain, the Gunung Agug)
the Lingga, Pasupati, the father of all humanity, all phallic
symbols. He is also the Sun, the Space, and as Batara Guru',
the,' Supreme Teacher, be is the maker of the world. As female
is Uma,mother of all nature, Giri Putri, goddess of the mountains,
Dewi Gangga and Dewi Danul, deities of rivers and lakes.,
These, his feminine manifestations (sakti), are taken by the
common people as his literal wives, but the learned interpretthese
wives, and his connubial relations with them, as the two,
eternal principles: male and female, spirit and matter, unit
d,~ for the constant production and reproduction of the universe,
the exaltation of the union of the sexes for procreation.
The well-known
Indian'trinity, the supreme gods Brahma,, Vishnu, and Siva,
are in Bali expressions of the one force called, Siwa, but
there is also a trinity in Bali: Brahma Siwa (Brahma) Sada
Siwa (Wisnu'), and Prama Siwa (Iswara). In the mind. of the
common people even this trinity becomes, with typical",
Balinese miscomprebension, a deity in itself called Sanghyang
trimurti or Sanggah Tiga Sakti, "the -Sbrine of the Three
Forces." Thus Siwa "is fire (Brahma) wbotbrougbsmoke
(vapour) becomes water (Wisnu')," which in turn fertilizes
the earth (Pertiwi) to produce rice (Sri). Ideas such as this,
juggled cleverly by the high priests, repeat themselves in
endless sequence to form the intricate Brahmanic philosophy.
All the gods that overcrowd the Balinese pantheon are thus
manifestations of Siwa ' but they are not always on the side
of righteousness, because the good creative and reproductive
forces can be polluted and turn into evil and acquire a destroying,
angry form. Thus the reversed form of Siwa is Kala, Lord of
Darkness, born out of Siwa to destroy the world, just as Siwa's
wife Uma became Durga, goddess of death, completing the cycle
from life to death. In the Balinese manuscript Usana Diawa
we find the story of the birth of Batara Kala:
Siwa had
created creatures with no ethics and without a code of morals,
who went naked, lived in caves, and had no religion. They
mated under the trees, left their children uncared for, and
ate whatever they found, living like beasts. This made Siwa
so angry that he decided to create a son to destroy the unworthy
human beings and told his wife Uma of his intentions while
mating with her. She withdrew indignant and in the struggle
Siwa's sperm fell on the ground. He then called the gods together
and told them, pointing to the sperm, that should it develop
life the result would bring them into great difficulties.
The alarmed gods began to shoot arrows at it; the sperm grew
a pair of shoulders when the first arrow struck it, hands
and feet sprang out after the second, and as they continued
to shoot arrows into it, the drop of sperm grew into a fearful
giant who stood as high as 'a mountain, demanding food with
which to calm his insatiable hunger. Siwa called him Kala
and sent him down to earth, where every day he could eat his
fill of people, and the human race -rapidly dwindled away.
Wisnu, alarmed, called upon Indra for help to save mankind,
and it was decided to civilize them by sending several of
the gods to teach them the law of life, agriculture, and the
arts and to provide them with the necessarytools.
